


put on a slow dumb show for you

by sheepknitssweater



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 18:47:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3947698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheepknitssweater/pseuds/sheepknitssweater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they get to the parking lot, Parse turns to Jack, contemplative. "She wants to fuck me."</p><p>Jack almost drops his keys. "Um," he says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	put on a slow dumb show for you

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Carmela for beta-ing, talking stuff through with me, and generally being the bomb. Thanks also to Ngozi for creating this thing, which has quickly become one of my all-time favorites.  
> Title is from "Slow Show" by The National.

Kelsey's in Parse's history class. She plays lacrosse.

Jack's seen her around, in the halls and with other guys on the team. He's never really spoken to her, but she seems nice. 

Jack and Parse are walking out to Jack's car when she flags them down, right at the junction of stairwell and hallway. If people didn't clear a path wherever Parse (or Kelsey, for that matter) stood, the three of them would be getting trampled. Luckily, Parse is popular like a cat that only shows up at home twice a year, but that everyone coos at anyway: distantly, universally, and a little bit cruelly.

"Hey," Parse says.

"Hi," Kelsey says. She doesn't turn her head, just flicks her eyes up and to the left. "Jack, right?"

He does this stupid nod thing.

Kelsey and Parse talk for awhile; Jack stands off a little to the side and feels too big for the situation. Whose space it is he's taking up, Kelsey's or Parse's, he's not sure. But Jack keeps worrying he'll stumble and bump into one of them, or sneeze, or _something_. Flirting's foreign territory, and Jack's too large of a blip on the landscape for hiding to be a viable strategy. Jack can't leave -- Parse is going to drive both of them to Jack's because Jack hates driving and Parse doesn't have a car and they're best friends -- but he probably should, still, or risk ruining this for Parse.

He doesn't leave.

"So, hey," Kelsey says, glancing up at Jack again, the way you glance at the daytime news in an orthodontist's office, "are you going? Tonight?"

Jack, having spent the last several minutes in one of those waking hazes where he's so nervous that it, along with everything else, mostly stops registering, doesn't know what she's talking about. Parse seems to, though. "We'll be there."

She smiles at him, nice teeth and all, and Parse raises his eyebrows ridiculously as they leave in opposite directions.

When they get to the parking lot, Parse turns to Jack, contemplative. "She wants to fuck me."

Jack almost drops his keys. "Um," he says.

Parse clicks the side of his mouth and winks at Jack. Jack tries to get into the passenger's seat quickly enough that Parse won't be able to make out his expression. Once the key's in the ignition, Jack makes a quick, admittedly half-assed attempt at salvaging the situation. "You sound sure."

Parse levels him with a pretty withering look. "Not rocket science."

The thing is that Jack wishes it were.

-

None of it's new: too many people and too much noise, the smell that used to scare Jack but just exhausts him now. Jack isn't good at parties the way Parse is, but he isn't bad, either. It's something he has to do; he's always been able to manage the things he's had to do. They have a system now, anyway, one that involves alcohol (in quantity) as soon as possible, whenever possible.

Parse kind of rolls his eyes at Jack when he sees Kelsey, which Jack thinks is unfair but by which he is also, disturbingly, relieved. Kelsey doesn't notice, though.

Then she's standing next to Parse -- next to as in close to, really very close to -- and Parse is looking down at her, and Jack can see the very precise curve and shadow of Parse's eyelashes in the cast of the gently swaying Tiffany light, and God if that isn't something Jack wished he didn't know about himself.

"See you, Zimms," Parse says on his way out of the kitchen, Kelsey leaning on him a little.

Jack sloshes vodka into a cup and walks away.

-

Jack doesn't know how long, exactly, Parse and Kelsey are gone for, but he does know that he drinks a lot, sitting squeezed against the right arm of a sofa in a back room in one of Kelsey's friends' big freezing houses. Some girl's crying really hard on the other end of the couch.

Jack likes drinking, because he would probably be actively and visibly shaking right now if it weren't for the alcohol. Instead, he just feels kind of nauseous. Still, there's only so much it can do. These weird, too-vivid images keep popping into his head, all Parse. Parse with his shirt off and his jeans unbuttoned, laughing at Jack for saying something stupid, his chest sweating a little and his face pink with the heat. Parse cracking his shoulders to gross Jack out but his shirt riding up in the process and his hipbones sharp and his arms wiry.

If Jack concentrates hard enough on not thinking about Parse, he'll start shaking, drink or no. So he lets the images cover him up, rise just far enough that he can still breathe through his nose. (No full-frontal nudity, but that isn't so difficult, seeing as Jack looks away as much as possible.)

It's a lot easier to fantasize about your best friend when you're drunk and in public, Jack thinks. Maybe it's just too loud and blurry for any of the usual cutoffs to work.

Whenever it is Parse finds Jack, he falls sideways into his lap like it's nothing. Jack doesn't actually know what to make of this on Parse's end -- maybe things went well enough with Kelsey that celly is in order; then again, maybe they didn't go well at all, maybe they went terribly, and this is just Parse being, excruciatingly, Parse, as always -- but Jack figures it'll probably be obvious he was thinking about Parse's body in some detail these past few whatevers if he makes any move to accommodate him, so he goes really still.

"Like sitting on a, uh," Parse says right against Jack's ear, then he laughs loud enough to hurt Jack, "a shitty fucking lawn chair."

"I'm not a lawn  chair," Jack says, without moving.

Parse hoists himself around so he's kind of straddling Jack and, Jesus, okay, this is a bad thing. " _Kelsey_ is not a lawn chair."

Jack doesn't really know what to say, so he goes, "okay, go sit on Kelsey," trying to be funny, but he ends up sounding really pissy, so then he tries to give Parse a look like he thinks Parse is the stupid fucking gay one here, not Jack, but Parse just laughs at him, so it probably doesn't work.

"Sitting on Kelsey wasn't as much fun as sitting on you," Parse says.

Jack still doesn't really know what to say. "You're probably too heavy to sit on Kelsey."

Parse makes this smug humming noise. Then his hips twitch forward in a way Jack thinks has to be deliberate and Jack's so afraid his vision swims, for a second, and he breathes in really sharply, and the girl on the other end of the sofa keeps crying. Parse looks worried for a fraction of a moment, or sad, or angry, but he ends up sliding off Jack and the sofa both and onto the floor.

"I didn't mean you're _that_ heavy." Jack almost follows with _I can take it_ , but that doesn't even sound good in his head, and Jack isn't trying to mess this up, isn't trying to take it any farther than he very necessarily has to, but Parse is smart. He can piece things together. Any pieces Jack still has the ability to withhold, he's going to.

-

Parse drives them back to his billet family's house, because it's closer to the party than Jack's.

Jack doesn't realize how tired he is until he's leaning on the window, cold glass against the hot air blasting from the vents, with Parse's weird music on in the background. The lights of cars and blinking signs and the odd house make the tips of Parse's hair glow and outline his jaw like it's something solid enough to hold onto. Jack lets himself think about that for a second longer than he might've otherwise, even as he knows he'll punish himself for it over the course of the next day and week and month. He still doesn't want to stare, though, so he closes his eyes.

-

Later, when Jack's on a blanket on Parse's bedroom floor, Parse looks over the edge of the bed at him. "Jack, I fucking hate Kelsey."

Jack thinks Parse might be joking, but that's Parse's default, and Parse looks different now. "Okay." Then he thinks, _well, Zimmermann, you're drunk off your ass, might as well ask the stupid question before you're in an accountable state._ "Are you going to hook up again?"

Parse stares at Jack, really stares. It's awhile before he answers. "Nope," he says. He reaches down and messes Jack's hair up before turning to the wall, leaving Jack looking at the line of his back.

Jack wonders whether Kelsey’s at the party, still.


End file.
